gratitude week :: day five

gratitude week :: day five

gratitude…the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness

our yard backs up to a farm with lots of cows…it gives me never-ending pleasure when i catch glimpses of them through our summer trees…and when the leaves drop in autumn, i see their sweet forms dotting the green hill every day…and i whisper a thank you for living where we live

homemade chai…steeping the spices always makes our house smell so good…then there’s the sipping, on a grey november afternoon with hands cupped around the warm mug…the sweet, the spicy, the creamy…the sliver of quiet

our furry pup has a way of plopping herself down wherever we are, on whatever we might be needing to see…but somehow we work around her and we snuggle in closer…she brings so much love into our home

sending a little love your way, m

pick your favorite way(s) to play along:

1. share your gratitudes on instagram with the hashtag #gratitudeweek_20142. leave a comment sharing your gratitudes in the comments below 3. if you have a blog, write a post and share a link to your post in the comments below4. send me an email…i love them, i read them, i respond to them all…your voice, your presence matters xo5. reflect privately at home6. sign up for gratitude notes

There is a cup of chai beside me right now, pumpkin pie pudding in the crock pot filling the air with its sweet scent and I am wearing a long sleeve sweater….so very grateful that cooler weather has arrived in the south.
Happy weekend.

Grateful today that the promise of reconciliation—or at least of love conquering something—spreads out before me like the day’s encroaching light. Today I teach my weekly writing course on the Chronicles of Narnia. Today, my children gather with others to read about the holy hush that greets Digory and Polly as they first hear Aslan sing the world awake. As the lion sings, all the children can do is fall silent in awe, in the reality that both amazing love and potential death reside in the jaws of the singer. And then these children will write about this holy hush. Today, we will do creative writing, which I love. We are in chapter 9 of the Magician’s Nephew, one of my favorite chapters. But I am a pastor’s wife, and today, over half of the children who come to my free-of-charge writing class are children whose parents are leaving our church for a bigger one. So today, I have the opportunity to swallow my gall and do the work that is before me, because to do otherwise it to engage in the most base form of vengeance: withholding love from children, just because I can. Today is a very good day, and I am ready to face it in love.